32 Charles E. Bennett, 



we should thereby be forced to admit that o by compensative 

 lengthening produces « in Cyprian, at least in this instance, 

 since the metre requires a long syllable at that point in the 

 verse. But Deecke's transcription of the inscription is unnat- 

 ural and unsatisfactory, so that his text does not afford the 

 basis for valid conclusions. See p. 3. 



There is less doubt in case of the frequent e • mi * / e.g. 

 Coll. 1,1; 16, 20, et pass. This form, which might be taken 

 for iiJLiMi{cf. Lesbian e/x/it. Coll. 307), in accordance with the 

 Cyprian mode of writing doubled consonants singly (see 

 § 24, 2), is shown to be rjixi by the bilinguis, Coll. 65, which, 

 by the side of the Cyprian syllabic signs ka ' ru ' xe ' \ e 'mi', 

 has KAPVI EMI. The possibility that this latter may be 

 for e^l^li is not absolutely excluded, since even inscriptions 

 written in Greek characters, particularly in the Old Alphabet, 

 sometimes have (j., X, v, etc. for |j.|x, \\, w. 



Like 7)ixi is 'A/xr;vya, Coll. 60, 18. Cf. Attic ^Xixeivia^. 



16. 



Elision, Crasis, ApJiceresis, Synizesis, Diceresis. 



1. Certain cases of elision are few; vis. acf) ml Coll. 59, 3 ; 

 Herlcov Kcir 'HSaX/wz/ 59, I ; Trep' ^llSaXiov 60, 2/ ; and prob- 

 ably /x.' <hpi(T€TV 126, I. 



The first of these a^' on is not to be regarded as for uttv 

 ML (on airv as the Cyprian form of utto, see § 9, 2), since the 

 elision of v is inadmissible. The oracle in Herod, vii., 220, 



■>) jjieya dcTTV ipLKv86<i vrr avSpdcn HepaeLSrjaL, 



where the final v of da-ru is elided according to Kuhner (Aiis- 

 fiihrliche Grammatik, L, p. 189), cannot be cited in support 

 of such elision, since the reading is justly suspected. Cf. 

 Stein ad loc. d<^ ml is rather to be taken for diro ml and 

 referred for its origin to the period before final o in Cyprian 

 became v. Once formed, the phrase defy' ml continued as a 

 stereotyped expression even after utto became dirv. 



The nature of the elided vowel in Kctlmv Kdr 'RSaXmv 



162 



